William C. Daniels, Scientist

Category Archives: Teaching

Well, classes are wrapping up at Brown and my official duties as Limnology TA are done. But my unofficial duties aren’t complete until I get some more awesome limno field trip pictures online. The class does two trips to Pout Pond (Belmont, NH) each year. The first trip is in winter (see previous post), and the second trip, shown here, is in spring.

This blog is about the Kaktovik Oceanography Program and the wonderful experience I had volunteering with the program in 2015. The KOP is an annual week-long natural science camp for local students in the town of Kaktovik, Alaska. It is hosted by the US Fish and Wildlife Service (thanks Greta Burkhart and Allyssa Morris), and largely coordinated by Ken Dunton’s research group from University of Texas. Students spend the week thinking about ecosystems, evolution, geology, etc., and do a lot of hands-on field work in the local lagoons and coastal habitats. Our goal was to show the participants that doing science is not only important and interesting, but also fun and a potentially viable career path. Continue reading →

Map of the ponds within Roger Williams Park (inset shows location of RWP within Rhode Island). We monitor Cunliffe Pond.

Today Brown geology grads, undergrads, and postdocs celebrated our third successful season with the URI Watershed Watch program. The WW, coordinated by the URI cooperative extension, monitors about 120 RI water bodies on a weekly basis from May to October, all through the volunteer efforts of RI citizens. The long-term data (>20 years for some lakes) are used to assess restoration efforts, pollution impacts, climate change impacts, etc. Full information can be found at the URI-WW website. Continue reading →

2015 is the year of New England coring expeditions for me. This spring we started out retrieving sediment cores from Siders Pond, MA for ancient DNA work (see previous post). Next I cored Providence-local Roger Williams Park ponds to assess nutrient pollution and heavy metal contamination since European settlement. If you have followed earlier blog posts on our weekly water quality monitoring, you may already be familiar with Cunliffe Pond in RWP. There are a total of 5 ponds in the park, all linked together by small streams and navigable by swan boat. Continue reading →

February 19 marked the first annual Brown Science Center Axolotl Day. I know what your thinking. Axolotl Day is a ridiculous concept. Well, you’re right. But, it is also pretty awesome and I was happy to be the guest speaker at the event.

Important Axolotl Facts: 1) axolotls are neotenic salamanders native to ponds just south of Mexico City, 2) they have a broad range of color phenotypes because of breeding for laboratory and pet purposes, 3) they are critically endangered or possibly extinct in the wild.

A recent scientific report determined that there are more than 117 million lakes in the world (Verpooter et al. 2014). Over 200 of these lakes are in beautiful Rhode Island. Rhode Islanders love their lakes, and to ensure that each lake has water safe to drink and nice to swim in, the water quality of each lake in RI is regularly monitored by an army of volunteers. The effort is coordinated by the URI Watershed Watch Program, and one lake, Cunliffe Pond, is monitored by a team Brown University students led by fellow graduate student Marc Mayes and myself. For a full overview of the Watershed Watch program, visit this site. Scroll down to see pictures from Cunliffe Pond.

Putting together the foldable boat. This boat has seen a lot of field work over the years and is awesome because it fits under the seats of the department van.

Meyrolin and Joe launch the boat on a beautiful morning.

Our launching point is the ‘Temple to Music’.

We take water samples for temperature, dissolved oxygen, and chlorophyll from 1 meter depth using this sampling device.

Meyrolin capping the D.O. bottle to get a Bubble-Free sample.

Joe, a remote sensing technician, uses tubing to collect a phytoplankton sample to test for the presence of nuisence blue-green algae.

Here I take another phytoplankton sample from closer to shore. The samples are sent each week to URI watershed extension for analysis.

Meyrolin, an undergrad at Brown, filters water for chlorophyll and phytoplankton measurements.

Joe using a field-D.O. kit. Dissolved oxygen is a critical indicator of pond health, because fish and other fauna are sensitive to low-oxygen events.